About 90 percent of healthcare practices lose new patient opportunities, and money when they answer the phone. That makes the front desk the second most critical job in any healthcare practitioner’s office. Of course, the top job under your roof is that of the practitioner or practitioners. But the front desk is the vital connecting […]

Serious discussions about patient experience often gravitate to how “satisfaction” enhances the overarching goal of delivering exceptional patient care. On one level, a patient “feels good” about the encounter when the clinic and/or the practitioner has empathetically met their needs and their expectations. On other levels, patient-practitioner communications channels are open, and a sense...

Believe it or not, most of what patients want most from their healthcare practitioner doesn’t have a big price tag or super-deluxe clinical credentials. In the future, a sleek new practitioner’s office and warm environment would likely be appreciated. But patient surveys and focus groups aren’t looking for fresh architectural design. The future healthcare practitioner’s […]

A brief and timely personal note is a highly effective technique to help healthcare professionals inspire patient satisfaction. We are bombarded daily with electronically conveyed messages; email, television and radio broadcast and even computerised billboards. There’s a generation of young people who text friends more frequently than using the phone. But a handwritten note has become […...

I know from experience in working with healthcare marketing clients throughout Australia and internationally that every situation requires a unique and proven approach to achieve closely defined marketing goals and objectives. Below is the final common-to-classic healthcare marketing and advertising mistakes that I have encountered over the years. Insufficient (or excessive) budget. There’s noth...

The secret to getting it right in healthcare marketing and advertising is essentially two-fold. Regardless of size, multi-location practices or individual practitioner, the challenges involve many constantly moving business and practice considerations. One side of the coin is the application of professional experience to create an ethical healthcare marketing plan that attracts the patients and c...

Compared to other forms of marketing when trying to promote your healthcare clinic, community marketing doesn’t get a lot of attention or even respect. Community marketing seeks to engage with and attract prospective new patients on a very local level, through their neighbourhoods. The most common way of doing this that I have seen done […]

You may never need advice about dealing with angry patients, but it’s much better to be prepared in advance. Here are some of the top ways to deal with unhappy patients. And as we get started, keep some of these high-level ideas in mind: First, have a good plan for angry patients… The operative words […]

If you picture your clinic marketing process as a circle, success is when you close the loop. Getting the phone to ring is a good start and an important part of the loop. But an inquiry call to your clinic doesn’t complete the loop. The ringing that you hear signals an important opportunity. What happens […]

A friend of mine provided this first-person experience and the reasons he fired his healthcare practitioner. “The practitioner that I had been seeing was leaving the practice, and an alternative practitioner was recommended. Two weeks later I was present for an appointment…the second patient to be seen that morning. I was shown to an exam […]